Microsoft Announces New Version Of Windows Called ‘Windows 8.1 with Bing’

Microsoft announced on Friday that some lower cost Windows devices will come with a new edition of Windows called Windows 8.1 with Bing.

Microsoft hardware partners, the company says, will be announcing new Windows devices over the next couple of weeks. With the Windows 8.1 update, it says, it has enabled partners to build lower cost devices with only 1GB of memory and 16GB of storage.

“Windows 8.1 with Bing provides all the same great experiences that Windows 8.1 offers with the Windows 8.1 Update, and comes with Bing as the default search engine within Internet Explorer,” says Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc. “And of course customers will be able to change that setting through the Internet Explorer menu, providing them with control over search engine settings. This new edition will be only be available preloaded on devices from our hardware partners. Some of these devices, in particular tablets, will also come with Office or a one-year subscription to Office 365.”

“The end result is that more people—across consumer and commercial—will have access to an even broader selection of new devices with all the awesomeness that Windows 8.1 provides, and get Office too, all at a really affordable price,” says LeBlanc. “Additionally, as reach expands, the opportunity for developers and their apps also increases.”

So the real only differences here between this new edition of Windows and Windows 8.1 with the most recent update is that Bing is set as the default, and you can’t just buy this version of Windows. It will only come pre-loaded on the upcoming devices from Microsoft’s partners.

Bing sucks. Ain’t no way around it. Forcing it on people ain’t gonna change the fact that you can barely find what you are looking for using Bing.

Robert in Vancouver

You can change to Google or anything else you want, you are not stuck with Bing only.
Read the article again.

Peter

Trying to get people to use Bing this way is stupid. It will just diminish what is at last a decent version of Windows. It has taken them all this effort to sort out Windows 8.0 and they don’t need anymore negative press. Bing has a long way to go to compete with Google and this tactic won’t do Microsoft any favours, they need to make Bing attractive as an alternative in its own right. The rest of the offering is at least going in the right direction.